Twenty-five Years After Rodney King: Has There Been Progress?

Professor David Sklansky Endorses Federal Prison Sentencing Reform

David Alan Sklansky, the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center at Stanford Law School, has written extensively about criminal procedure and policing.  He co-authored a new study of the use of big data to combat police discrimination, and he has a separate forthcoming article about prosecutorial power.  He helped students in two recent policy labs produce two reports on diversity in prosecutors’ offices, Stuck in the ‘70s: The Demographics of California Prosecutors, and Diversity in Prosecutors’ Offices: Views from the Front Line.  Earlier in his career he served as a federal prosecutor and then as special counsel to the independent review panel appointed to investigate the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division scandal.

In this Q&A, Professor Sklansky discusses policing in the United States and progress that has been made in the twenty-five years since Rodney King’s encounter with Los Angeles police was captured on video, spurring protests against police use of force and, following the acquittal of four police officers charged with beating King, widespread riots in L.A. Two of the officers were subsequently convicted in a federal trial of violating King’s civil rights.

It has been twenty-five years since Rodney King was beaten by four Los Angeles police officers.  How has policing of minority communities changed since then?

There’s been so much awful news recently about the police—the shootings of unarmed Black men by the police, and the horrific murder of police officers in Dallas and then in Baton Rouge—that it can be hard to remember that in most respects American policing today is in a much better place than it was twenty-five years ago.   The police are better trained, more diverse, and less violent.  They have stronger ties to their local communities.  Police shootings are down, and police officers themselves are safer.  Communities are safer, too, including in minority neighborhoods—and part of the decline in crime is due to better policing.

Did the Los Angeles Police Department reform itself after the King case?

Yes, but it took a while.  There’s a broad consensus that the LAPD is a much better organization today and has far better relations with minority communities.  But much of this change didn’t occur until the Department agreed to federal oversight in 2000, nearly a decade after the beating of Rodney King.

How much do we know about the racial composition of police forces? Are they representative of the populations they serve?  And does that matter?

We know a lot about the racial composition of police forces, because the federal government has been collecting and disseminating these statistics for decades.  And what the numbers show is that police departments have made tremendous progress diversifying, but the progress has been incomplete and uneven.   In many large cities, the police force is now majority minority, but other departments—especially smaller ones—are still dramatically unrepresentative of the populations they serve.

And, yes, diversity matters.  It’s not necessarily that minority officers, individually, differ from white officers.  The evidence on that is mixed.  What’s clearer is that departments that diversify—along racial lines, along gender lines, and along lines of ethnicity and sexual orientation—become more vibrant organizations, less insular and less resistant to change.  And a diverse workforce helps a police department build bridges to diverse communities—although it certainly doesn’t guarantee those bridges will be built.

So then why is there such a widespread sense that policing is in crisis?

A lot of it is cellphones and social media.  The beating of Rodney King became a cause célèbre—spurring a pioneering reform commission headed by Warren Christopher, and eventually resulting in the reforms the LAPD adopted in the early 2000s—only because someone who lived in a nearby apartment happened to record it from his balcony on a camcorder.  Since then citizen videos of the police have become much more common because we’re all carrying video cameras with us all the time on our phones.  The Black Lives Matter movement used those videos, and the new platforms of social media, to bring attention to an aspect of American policing that hasn’t improved nearly as much as it needs to:  the frequency of fatal shootings by the police, particularly of young men of color.

That’s a real issue, not a manufactured one.  And it’s just one way in which progress remains to be made in American law enforcement.  Policing is incredibly decentralized in the United States.  There are 18,000 police departments across the country, and three-quarters of them have fewer than 25 officers.  So it’s not surprising that progress has been uneven.  There are lots of departments that still have to catch up with the community policing reforms that many other departments adopted in the 1980s and 1990s.  And even some of the larger departments that did much to pioneer community policing—departments like the one in Chicago—obviously continue to have many problems themselves.

Some of this is because the most important reform agendas—the turn toward community policing, and the diversification of police workforces—lost some steam over the last decade and a half.  Because of budgetary pressures and concerns about terrorism, many politicians and police executives began to think, wrongly, that community policing was a luxury they couldn’t afford.  Meanwhile the legal climate has grown much more hostile to affirmative action, as a result the diversification of police forces has slowed.

And one more thing:  Not all of the developments in policing over the past twenty-five years have been positive.  Many departments went overboard in relying on aggressive stop-and-frisk programs, and in deploying military tactics and military machinery.  Minority communities bore the brunt of these approaches, and they often took a heavy toll on the relations between those communities and the police—the relations that community policing relied on and tried to strengthen.

There’s a widespread perception that the criminal justice system fails to hold police officers responsible for the improper use of deadly force.  Is that accurate?

Most wrongful uses of force by the police probably aren’t criminal; they reflect bad training and tactics, not criminal intent.  Still, it’s important that police officers be held accountable for what they do, and that will include, in some cases, criminal accountability.  Criminal prosecutions of police officers are difficult.  Even when there is criminal intent, it can be very hard to prove because policing is messy, complicated, and often dangerous.  All four of the officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted in a state criminal trial, remember, and two of them were acquitted in the subsequent federal trial.

That said, it can be important to bring a criminal case even when securing a conviction will be difficult.  And legitimate questions can be raised about whether elected district attorneys, who work closely with the police, should be supervising the investigation and prosecution of officers suspected of the criminal misuse of deadly force.  Particularly when that process is wrapped in the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, and particularly when it results in a decision not to file criminal charges, it can be hard for the public to trust that justice is being dispensed in an evenhanded way.

That’s one of the reasons that the Stanford Criminal Justice Center has focused so much of its attention over the last year and a half on prosecutors—who they are, and how they operate.  We know a lot less about prosecutors than we know about the police, and the SCJC is trying to change that.

Aside from criminal prosecutions, what can be done to improve the relationship between police departments and minority communities?

We need a renewed commitment to community policing—to the police working hand-in-hand with the community, rather than as something separate and apart from the community.  We should renew our commitment, as well, to diversifying police departments. We need better data about police shootings—and about more routine police activities, like traffic stops and pedestrian stops.  We could use national standards for the proper use of force, and we need to revisit, in particular, the circumstances under which the police fire on suspects who do not appear to have guns. More ambitiously, we need a new relationship with rank-and-file officers and the organizations that represent them.  They should be partners in reform, not just the objects of reform.

4 Responses to Twenty-five Years After Rodney King: Has There Been Progress?
  1. https://law.stanford.edu/2016/07/20/twenty-five-years-after-rodney-king-has-there-been-progress/
    Dear Stanford News,
    Professor Sklansky’s recommendation that even difficult-to-prove criminal charges should be filed so that the facts are publically aired is excellent. Perhaps we could go even further and require that all questionable shootings of unarmed suspects (regardless of race) by police go to trial.
    The dozens of videos of such killings fall into three categories:
    1. The suspect is running away.
    2. The suspect is resisting arrest.
    3. The suspect fails to obey commands to show his or her hands.
    The first category occurs too often when the suspect has been stopped for some minor infraction. Perhaps the use of deadly force under those circumstances should be prohibited unless the suspect is obviously armed and presents a present danger to the public.
    The second category includes too many videos where the suspect has been subdued and is shot anyway. Those should always be prosecuted.
    The third category raises the issue of whether the suspect understands the commands. These are always given in English which is not useful to non-English speakers. Ditto deaf people. Not sure what the ameliorating solution is for this problem. Thoughts?
    I do have a quibble with the statement that Most wrongful uses of force by the police probably aren’t criminal; they reflect bad training and tactics, not criminal intent. Poor training or tactics are not relevant to criminal intent. Criminal intent does not require proof that the shooter intended to murder, only whether the person intentionally pulled the trigger or was negligently handling his or her weapon. Once intent to pull the trigger or negligent handling is shown, then the prosecutor needs to examine the circumstances. Was it reasonable for the police officer to shoot. Homicide runs through a broad range from murder (first or second degree) to manslaughter to justifiable. Poor training may be found in the causal chain, but is not relevant to whether charges should be brought.
    As always, thank you for publishing such informative and interesting articles.
    James Luce,
    Yale ‘66
    Santa Clara Law, ‘74

  2. Dear Sharon,

    First, I would like to thank you and David for creating such an honest and informative piece. Both of your efforts have left me inspired and hopeful that there is a better America that we can look forward to as it relates to community police enforcement and prosecutorial influence in the overall picture. However, there is an intricate detail that I believe is imperative to introduce and discuss when we consider the state of community relationships and policing. There is a true discrepancy in perception between what minority community members believe police officers role in their community is, and what the officers believe or perceive their role to be in the community. There must be a way to clean up this difference and place the members of the community and the officers on the same accord, and as a result will create a more trusting relationship between the two. The solution to this apparent problem is activity that expands outside the traditional realm of police “serving their communities”. We must reexamine how we would like police to “serve” their communities, and it must be in ways that do not include them in uniform or patrol vehicles. Community members must see their local officers in their local convenience stores, grocery stores, restaurants, and other public settings. As well, there must be organized and planned activities that unite officers and community members in organic ways. This approach will do two things, 1) it will change the mentality that police officers may have about the communities they serve and the members in them, acquainting them on a more personal and intimate level. 2) it will enable the community members and police officers to see their respective roles in the community more clearly and can quite possibly redefine their roles as it relates to one another. David touched on this matter lightly in his final answer of the Q and A, explaining that we need a renewed commitment to community policing, but it is important to understand how we make this possible and construct a way of making this is a reality, as current efforts may not be sufficient.

    Thank you for your time and careful consideration with my comment and I can only pray that I am able to impart my perspective on the Stanford community and beyond in the years to come.

  3. Great article. But unfortunately things have not gotten better. I believe we lost all respect for all individuals. I was at the park the other day and saw two young mothers with children one was a white child and the other was a black child and they played and played and played with no cares in the world Point being is when did we loose that feeling. Quick note if anyone is looking for qualified lawyers check out our site at http://www.lawyerezz.com

  4. Dear Sharon,

    First, I would like to thank you and David for creating such an honest and informative piece. Both of your efforts have left me inspired and hopeful that there is a better America that we can look forward to as it relates to community police enforcement and prosecutorial influence in the overall picture. However, there is an intricate detail that I believe is imperative to introduce and discuss when we consider the state of community relationships and policing. There is a true discrepancy in perception between what minority community members believe police officers role in their community is, and what the officers believe or perceive their role to be in the community. There must be a way to clean up this difference and place the members of the community and the officers on the same accord, and as a result will create a more trusting relationship between the two. The solution to this apparent problem is activity that expands outside the traditional realm of police “serving their communities”. We must reexamine how we would like police to “serve” their communities, and it must be in ways that do not include them in uniform or patrol vehicles. Community members must see their local officers in their local convenience stores, grocery stores, restaurants, and other public settings. As well, there must be organized and planned activities that unite officers and community members in organic ways. This approach will do two things, 1) it will change the mentality that police officers may have about the communities they serve and the members in them, acquainting them on a more personal and intimate level. 2) it will enable the community members and police officers to see their respective roles in the community more clearly and can quite possibly redefine their roles as it relates to one another. David touched on this matter lightly in his final answer of the Q and A, explaining that we need a renewed commitment to community policing, but it is important to understand how we make this possible and construct a way of making this is a reality, as current efforts may not be sufficient.

    Thank you for your time and careful consideration with my comment and I can only pray that I am able to impart my perspective on the Stanford community and beyond in the years to come.

Comments are closed.